The Administration signals it may release more crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help reduce gasoline prices before the 2024 presidential election

This Administration does not about U.S. energy security.

The Biden administration recently stated they would release more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve if gasoline prices increase this summer before the presidential election in November. Amos Hochstein, one of Biden’s energy advisors, said in an interview with the Financial Times that gas prices are still too high for many Americans, and he would like to see them “cut down a little bit further.” The FT quoted Hochstein as saying:

We will do everything we can to make sure that the market is supplied well enough to ensure as low price as possible for American consumers. I think that we have enough in the SPR if it’s necessary (emphasis added).

This comes on the heels of an announcement by the Biden administration that they will sell one million barrels of gasoline from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve, an emergency gas reserve established after Superstorm Sandy, to lower gas prices this summer. The sales will be from storage sites in New Jersey and Maine in increments of 100,000 at a time. That announcement went on to say:

This builds on other actions by President Biden to lower gas and energy costs—including historic releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the largest-ever investment in clean energy. While Congressional Republicans fight to preserve tax breaks for Big Oil at the expense of hardworking families, President Biden is advancing a more secure, affordable, and clean energy future to lower utility bills while record American energy production helps meet our immediate needs.

The statement that President Biden has taken actions to lower gas and energy costs defies the reality that Joe Biden campaigned he would eliminate fossil fuels and has made good on his promises. He and his administration declared war on U.S. energy starting on the first day of his administration on January 20, 2022, when Biden started signing executive orders designed to undo every pro-energy policy that President Trump had put into effect:

• canceling the Keystone XL pipeline,

• restricting domestic production by issuing a moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

• restoring and expanded the use of the government-created social cost of carbon metric to artificially increase the regulatory costs of energy production of fossil fuels when performing analyses, as well as artificially increase the so-called “benefits” of decreasing production.

• revoking Trump administration executive orders, including those related to the Waters of the United States rule and the Antiquities Act. The Trump-era actions decreased regulations on Federal land and expanded the ability to produce energy domestically.

One week later, on January 27, 2021, Biden signed more executive orders:

• imposing a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on public lands

• and in offshore waters

• restricting Federal oil and gas permitting and leasing practices.

• directing his Interior Department to conduct a review of permitting and leasing policies.

• directing agencies to eliminate federal fossil fuel “subsidies” wherever possible, disadvantaging oil and natural gas compared to other industries that receive similar Federal tax treatments or other energy sources which receive direct subsidies.

• attacking the energy industry by promoting “ending international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy while simultaneously advancing sustainable development and a green recovery.” In other words, the federal government attacked U.S. oil and gas producers while subsidizing their favored alt-energy industries.

• pushing for an increase in enforcement of “environmental justice” violations and support for such efforts, which typically are advanced by radical environmental organizations and slip-and-fall lawyers hoping to cash in on the backs of energy consumers.

All in all, the Biden Administration has taken over 200 actions designed to increase energy prices. A complete list of those 200 actions was compiled by Thomas J. Pyle and published by the Institute for Energy Research.

My take: The statement by Biden’s energy advisor quoted above makes it clear that this administration could care less about energy security. They view the Strategic Petroleum Reserves as just a political tool they will use to buy votes.

The goal of this administration is to drive up the price of oil and natural gas and, if necessary, try to trick voters by emptying out the SPR to get a short-term decline in gasoline prices. If this makes the U.S. weaker and vulnerable to the whims of OPEC and disruptions in international energy flows, so be it.

Even with all of their executive orders and DOE/EPA anti-oil and gas rules and regulations, the U.S. oil and gas industry has managed to forge ahead. The U.S. oil and natural gas industry has fought hard to continue keeping the economy strong by providing the necessary hydrocarbons despite the Biden administration’s many attempts to kill it. Without the U.S. energy industry’s strong will to keep up the fight and stay focused on its core business of finding, producing, and transporting crude oil and natural gas, the oil and natural gas industry would have tanked as would have the U.S. economy.

When the boot of anti-energy policies is removed from the neck of the U.S. oil and gas industry, we will witness another energy boom bigger than the one between 2016 and 2020 and a resurgence in growth in the U.S. economy like never before.

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